A number of skate sharpening fixtures have been developed for skate sharpening machines. These fixtures hold the skate blade in place while a grinding wheel or the like is used to sharpen or contour the skate blade. The orientation of the skate blade with respect to the grinding wheel is critical, and if the blade and wheel are not properly aligned, the blade sharpening or contouring will be compromised.
Prior art fixtures offer control of the blade orientation, see for example, the Wissota and Blademaster fixtures, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,248 to Sacriska.
FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of an exemplary skate sharpening fixture, which is designated by the reference numeral 100. The fixture comprises an anvil base 101 which floats on a base plate 103, using springs, bolts and the like. Control knobs 105 are provided for adjusting the orientation of the anvil base 101 with respect to the base plate 103 for sharpening.
An anvil plate 107 is mounted to the anvil base 101 using block 109. The anvil plate 107 provides a surface 108 for one side of the skate blade to rest when the skate edge is being sharpened. A clamp assembly 111 is also provided, which is also mounted to the anvil base 101. The clamp assembly includes a clamp 113, which is designed to be biased against the other side of the skate blade during the sharpening operation.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,332 to Sakcriska discloses a skate sharpening holder that uses a number of cams 26 that interface with a cam follower 40 to provide a contour to the blade, see FIG. 1. There is also disclosed a blade centering system that uses dowels 104 that are positioned between the struts of the blade, see FIGS. 1 and 2. FIGS. 12 and 13 show an alternative system to deal with skates with plastic blade holders. The dowel system using dowels 104 cannot work for these types of blade. Instead of using dowels 104, dowels 210 are positioned between the anvil or jaw 69 and the surface 214 of the blade holder. As an alternative, the jaw 68 can be contoured to follow the curve of the blade holder, thus eliminating the need for the dowels 10.
The holder in Sakcriska has a number of problems since it is designed to interface with the skate blade holder in order to center the blade on the holder. However, since there are a number of skate manufacturers, the holders for the skates vary widely amongst different manufacturers. As such, the holder of Sakcriska must use a high number of dowels in order to accommodate the different skates available in the market. This is just not a practical approach for centering skates to a skate sharpening holder. Also, the invention of Sakcriska is predicated on skate blades where the skate blade holders were molded with the skate blades such that the skate blades were not removable and many of the features of Sakcriska are based on these types of skates. However, skate blades now are removable from their holders. As such, a need exists to provide improved skate sharpening holders, which need is fulfilled by the present invention.